Picket road trip: Elberton, Ga., museum features 'Dutchy,' a bizarre granite monument yanked down for looking like a Yankee

Fallen monument rests in a side room of an Elberton museum (Picket photos)

Until now, the only mention I’ve made in this blog about Elberton, Ga. -- the “Granite Capital of the World” -- was about a phone interview I had with a 92-year-old son of a Civil War veteran.

I still pinch myself that I spoke with Henry V. Booth back in 2011. It was hard to believe he was among a handful of people in that club of offspring still alive 150 years after the war.

His father, John Isham Booth, was a Confederate guard at Andersonville prison and fathered him in when he was 71.

So with that doozy, you’d think Elberton had gifted me enough.

Au contraire, my friends.

I traveled earlier this summer to the northeast Georgia city to see something that had escaped my notice all these years.

Oh, I’ve known about the importance of Elbert County to the granite world and its 40 quarries and scores of related businesses.

Most of its products -- particularly the blue-gray variety -- go for gravestones and other cemetery memorials. The industry employs a huge workforce and there are granite structures and signs throughout the area..

But until a couple weeks before my visit, I had near heard of “Dutchy” – the first monument made of Elberton granite. Dutchy, shall we say, turned out to be a one-off and the story for him did not end well.

But at least he is popular with tourists. Here's why.

Colorized photograph of the 1898 dedication (Elberton Granite Assn.)

The poor lad didn’t stand much of a chance when he was erected on the courthouse square in 1898 during the height of the Lost Cause narrative.

The short statue looked downright weird. The designer wrongly chiseled a Federal uniform and Dutchy had bulging eyes and a similarly cartoonish mustache. Critics dubbed him a “cross between a Pennsylvania Dutchman and a hippopotamus” – hence Dutchy.

Dutchy was an embarrassment for the town, and a group of inebriated young men in August 1900 finally took matters in their own hands.

A pithy article in the Elberton Star caught the mood of the citizenry.

"’Dutchy’ had been feeling badly for some time and looking really worse than he felt.  His looks didn't bother him, though. That was the public's trouble, but other causes troubled him.  He had a bad case of the gout, judging from the size of his legs and feet – and as he was compelled to wear a heavy United States army overcoat and heavy marching order – like Confederate soldiers didn't wear during the civil war – the hot weather got next to him."

The article playfully recounts how a keg of beer was rolled up, but Dutchy, obviously, could not get down to enjoy and cool off. Eventually, the heat got to him. Down came Dutchy with a thud, and the broken pieces were buried near the monument’s base the next day.

(He remained the most famous Elbert County granite monument until 1980, when the Georgie Guidestones were erected. Dubbed the “American Stonehenge,” the controversial monument was heavily damaged in a 2022 bombing. The remnants were removed.)

Bob Ward and his family have run Ward's Pharmacy for decades (Picket photo)

Bob Ward remembers the day in 1982 that Dutchy was unearthed so that he could be sent to the Elberton Granite Association museum, which opened the year before.

For three generations, the Ward family has operated a pharmacy on the square. Ward, 73, stood from the doorway during much of the excavation. “Lo and behold, there he was.”

After being put through a local car wash, Dutchy was trucked to the museum, where today he lies in repose in four pieces. The broken rifle stock is kept in the association’s office next door.

I have to admit Dutchy presents an odd sight, but he may being doing just fine. His eyes gaze pensively to the heavens as if he is being comforted. The rest of him is pretty sad,  lying on a cart above synthetic green grass.

You can take a piece of Dutchy's story home with you. The museum has a free pamphlet entitled "The Fall and Rise of Dutchy," and it features a history and photos of his better days and exhumation 80-plus years later.

Writer, curator and educator Rebecca Brantley wrote in 2018 of her own road trip to Elberton.

“The sculpture’s story is both eccentric and unsettling,” she wrote in Burnaway magazine. “It bears relevance in contemporary culture, given the ongoing problem of Confederate monuments in the South and the call to dismantle them.”

She repeats local lore that says the sculptor likely was a European immigrant who knew little about the war and proper uniforms.

The demise of Dutchy led Elberton to put up a new monument to Confederate dead that stands today on the same pedestal and cornerstone that held Dutchy. (Picket photo at left).

Ward believes he is made of metal instead of granite. Still, he told me, realism prevailed.

“We have one that looks like a Confederate soldier.”